French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday cited U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to make Canada the “51st state” as an example of American foreign policy that is sacrificing allies for “the law of the strongest.” Macron’s blunt remarks were matched by similar comments from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a separate speech that showed European leaders’ growing concern as Trump...
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to stand firm when he travels to China later next week and keep the steep tariffs on its electric vehicles in place. Canada opened a trade irritant with China when the government, in lockstep with then-U.S. president Joe Biden, slapped a 100 per cent tariff on EVs — arguing the...
The cancellation of a planned event at York University has led some Conservative MPs to accuse students there of attacking free speech. Conservative MP Garnett Genuis says he was denied permission to hold an event on campus on Friday.
Stephen Harper’s official prime ministerial portrait will be unveiled next month as part of commemorations of the 20th anniversary of the modern Conservative Party first winning power. The painting, by Canadian artist Phil Richards, will be revealed at an event on Parliament Hill on Feb. 3, three years after work first started on the project. The next night, Mr. Harper...
Canada's closest physical neighbours are in an escalating dispute that risks breaking the military alliance that has protected the nations of the North Atlantic for decades. U.S. President Donald Trump keeps talking about annexing Greenland, the Danish territory where Canada is about to open a diplomatic mission. Here's a look at why diplomacy, climate change and natural resources have put...
The proportion of Albertans who are in favour of sovereignty has increased over the past year and a half, a new Research Co. poll has found. In the online survey of a representative national sample, 31% of Albertans support Alberta becoming a country independent from Canada, up nine points since a similar Research Co. poll conducted in June 2023. Just...
Nanos conducted an RDD dual frame (land- and cell-lines) hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,009 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between November 29th and December 2nd, 2025, as part of an omnibus survey. The margin of error for this survey is ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
If it came in isolation, one might look at the toothless debates over the legality of the U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and chalk it up as another American intervention in Latin America. But the context is not the same. It’s not just that U.S. President Donald Trump warned Colombian President Gustavo Petro that he could be next...
The Danish people are feeling shocked, and not a little betrayed, by President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, a constituent part of the Kingdom of Denmark, says one of the country’s most senior diplomats. “Denmark has done everything the U.S. has asked of us. They called and we delivered: in Iraq, Libya and especially in Afghanistan, where we had...
Two people are hospitalized after they were shot by federal agents, the Portland Police Bureau said in a statement. It is not immediately clear what their conditions are. The FBI Portland office said in a post on X that the shooting involved Customs and Border Protection agents and they are leading the investigation.
At some point almost every young person comes to one of two startling realizations, that seem to upend everything they have ever been taught. The first: We’re the bad guys. America, Canada, the West: We’ve done all sorts of terrible things! All that rot about democracy and freedom, fighting dictatorships and all that, when it’s our leaders who are the...
A major geopolitical fault line shifted Saturday morning, as the United States arrested Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro after a quarter century of socialist tyranny. This is a good thing. Canada did not recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela, and with him out of the way, we hope that Venezuelans will finally be able to enjoy freedom and democracy...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “elbows up” rhetoric hasn’t exactly translated into action, and the recent events surrounding the American capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro are just the latest example of this. Don’t get me wrong: nobody expects Carney or Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand to go out of their way to antagonize the Trump administration with bravado-laden statements. Anything...
WHEN HITLER SWALLOWED CZECHOSLOVAKIA in 1938 and then divided Poland with Stalin in 1939, my parents’ generation decided, coming home from the war, to place the sovereignty of nation states at the heart of the United Nations Charter. With the operation in Venezuela, our generation has to ask, and not for the first time, whether anything now survives of a...
The clinical military extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last week has exposed many policy and legal issues implicating future American hemispheric involvement, including American threats toward Greenland, a territory of NATO member Denmark. The rationale for the attacks on Venezuela, as articulated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was to enforce U.S. law, since Maduro and his wife had...
When Alfred Nobel drafted his will in 1895, he gave his Peace Prize a deceptively simple mandate: to honour those who had done the most to advance fraternity among nations, reduce standing armies, and promote peace through co-operation and dialogue. Nobel was no romantic: He was an industrialist who invented dynamite and amassed a fortune from armaments, and he understood...
For those inclined to rejoice at the capture of Maduro and the display of U.S. military muscle in Venezuela, caution is warranted. What may appear, at first glance, as a decisive blow against a brutal and corrupt government carries consequences that extend far beyond Caracas, and far beyond the immediate satisfaction of seeing an authoritarian ruler displaced.
The monster of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, is gone. Good. Most can agree on that, despite the trashing of international law employed by the Donald Trump administration to get him. But as the predator President of the United States warns of toppling other nations – which, for one thing, distracts from afflictions in his own broken country – the task will...
The good news about the U.S. abduction of Nicolás Maduro is that Venezuela is finally rid of a corrupt, violent and buffoonish leader. The bad news is that the country may soon be under the power of another corrupt, violent and buffoonish leader — Donald Trump — who is itching to use his military might on other countries in the...
Occam’s razor is the principle that the most plausible explanation of events is the simplest. Most often this is true. To account for Donald Trump, however, we need a different hermeneutical instrument. Say hello to Occam’s kazoo: the principle that the most plausible explanation, so far as Mr. Trump is involved, is invariably the stupidest. To understand his motives in...
Chrystia Freeland appears to have developed a knack for making career moves that shake up Liberal governments. A little more than a year since the former finance minister dramatically exited Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, triggering his departure and a whole new Liberal era, Freeland’s announced plans to step down as an MP have set things in motion for an imminent shakeup...
In the past days and weeks, we have witnessed the Finlandization of Canada. In Finland’s case during the Cold War that meant, in the words of the Finnish political cartoonist Kari Suomalainen, “bowing to the East, without mooning the West.”
From “Dr. New Deal” to “Dr. Win-the-War.” That’s how American President Franklin Roosevelt described his transformation in the days and months following the attack on Pearl Harbor and his country’s entry into the Second World War.
Operation Just Cause in Panama. Operation Midnight Hammer in Iran. And now, Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela. The American branding of military interventions is its own propaganda sub-specialty. Of course, that last one — Donald Trump’s January 3rd removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office and rendition to Brooklyn to face drug trafficking charges — comes with its own...
Like many on the Canadian left, I am disappointed in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response to the US kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro. “The removal of illegitimate, corrupt, repressive, government leader — uh, Mr. Maduro — is welcome news,” he said this week.
As a child of the 60s and 70s, I grew up on some of the greatest music ever made. And many of the most iconic recordings of that period were inspired by protest, motivated by the rage boiling up in young people over the actions of the U.S. government. It’s said that Neil Young wrote his searing diatribe Ohio in...
THAT WAS QUITE THE interview minister of energy and natural resources Tim Hodgson gave to La Presse in the last days before Christmas. “This document is an alarm signal,” Hodgson told Joël-Denis Bellavance, referring to the Donald Trump administration’s National Security Strategy.
In the calculus of modern-day populism, there is no greater currency than the decisive act. In an unprecedented moment this past week, the world watched as U.S. President Donald Trump cashed in, deploying American special forces to snatch illegitimate self-proclaimed leader of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro from Caracas and deliver him to a New York jail cell. In the immediate aftermath...
Happy New Year. Or not, depending on where you find yourself these days. If you’re deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, that’s in a cell in Brooklyn, N.Y. If you’re U.S. President Donald Trump, that’s on the catbird seat in Washington, D.C. And if you’re Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, that’s on a tightrope in Ottawa, trying to strike the right...
The Liberals and Conservatives offered completely different responses to the Trump administration’s abduction of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. Those responses reflect the world view of each party. For Conservatives, foreign policy is rooted in values; for Liberals, in interests. On Saturday morning, not long after word arrived that American special forces had captured and abducted Mr. Maduro and his wife...
It seems clear that there was great excitement in the Poilievre household on Saturday morning, as news of the surgical strike by U.S. special forces in Venezuela filtered through. Pierre Poilievre’s wife, Anaida, is Venezuelan, and like many of her fellow citizens, she likely rejoiced in the arrest and deportation of the illegitimate president Nicolás Maduro.
The sensational arrest of Nicolas Maduro for conspiracy and narco-terrorism charges, contrary to the national security interests of the United States, was breathtaking by any measure. The now deposed Venezuelan ruler was captured following a covert U.S. military operation carried out beyond its borders, as special forces infiltrated the presidential compound in the middle of the night, grabbed their target...
Even before the 51st state threats, before the tariffs, before the ICE raids and now the flagrantly illegal attack on Venezuela, Donald Trump was the least popular American president in Canadian history by quite some distance. But if there was a relative bastion of support for America's 45th and 47th president, it was in Alberta — and especially its oil...
If Putin or Xi removed Maduro and said they would be running Venezuela for a while and selling Venezuela’s oil to make profits from it, would you celebrate this as a great step for freedom? Of course not.
The decision by the Trump administration to launch an arrest operation in Caracas, Venezuela, capturing Nicolás Maduro and his spouse Cilia Flores, has profound consequences for all of us. Trump’s triumphal press conference and initial media coverage from US media focused on the level of organization, discipline, technology and expertise required to extract the Maduros in the middle of the...
Prime Minister Mark Carney will travel to Doha, Qatar on Jan. 18 for a bilateral visit as he seeks to broaden trade relations and drum up foreign investment. It's part of a broader diplomatic trip that will include stops in China and Switzerland, and Carney's office says he will be the first sitting Canadian prime minister to visit the middle...
'I can’t understand why a government can’t get down to business and operate rigorously,' says Alan Williams, a former assistant deputy minister of materiel at National Defence. The federal government missing its own deadline for the release of its highly anticipated Defence Industrial Strategy can hurt the industry, and signals to other countries that Canada is “inept and incompetent,” says...
Former Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Albert Chan Wai-yip is a longtime critic of China, who has accused its government of "crimes against humanity" after a crackdown on dissent in the Chinese special administrative region. But Chan said it is time for Canadians to look east again, as Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares for a trip to China where he will...
A former Canadian diplomat previously detained in China for nearly three years says Prime Minister Mark Carney’s upcoming visit to China is an important diplomatic move but warns that Canadian negotiators need to be cautious about Beijing’s ultimate motives. “China is a very complicated challenge for Canada, even more so now, given all the challenges we have in dealing with...
Ottawa has asked the governments of South Korea and Germany, two countries with companies bidding to build the Canadian navy’s next submarine, to facilitate auto industry production pledges in Canada as part of the pitches, a source familiar with the matter said.
A prominent Inuk lawyer and activist born in Greenland says U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent comments about taking control of the territory should be concerning for the entire international community. Aaju Peter, who has lived in Iqaluit since the 1980s, told CTV News Channel on Thursday that she didn’t initially take Trump’s comments about annexing Greenland seriously. “But now, seeing...
First ministers' meeting planned for Jan. 29 in Ottawa, say sources. Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet with the premiers in Ottawa later this month, the start of a busy year where the mandatory review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico-Agreement (CUSMA) kicks into high gear. Carney will hold the first ministers' meeting on Jan. 29 and will host a dinner the night...
The federal government says 25 banned firearms were collected and destroyed during a six-week trial run of its buyback program last fall. Public Safety Canada says the pilot project, which took place in Nova Scotia, showed that clearer and more timely instructions are required to ensure the participation of firearm owners.
A substantial entry level pay hike for pilots and the acquisition of new and advanced aircraft are "absolutely" helping to shore up Royal Canadian Air Force pilot retention and morale, says the force's commander. In a wide-ranging recent interview with The Canadian Press, Commander Lt.-Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet said she is seeing signs of progress despite the protracted personnel crisis gripping...
Longtime Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland, who was a driving force in Canadian politics throughout the past decade, will resign as a member of Parliament on Friday. "It has been an immense honour to serve my constituents and all Canadians in Parliament since 2013," Freeland said in a social media post Wednesday. "Going forward I will continue...
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minneapolis driver on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials said was an act of self-defence but that the city’s mayor described as “reckless” and unnecessary. The woman was shot during a traffic stop in a residential neighborhood...
Canada's former ambassador to Venezuela says Ottawa is "parroting" Washington's anti-democratic line by giving air to the idea of fresh elections in Venezuela. Ben Rowswell, who served as Canada's envoy to Caracas, says Canada should instead be working toward helping install the leaders voters chose in the stolen 2024 election. Rowswell is reacting to a statement issued Tuesday by Foreign...
NDP leadership candidates are entering the final sprint to sign up members and raise the last of four $25,000 payments required to be on the ballot. The membership cutoff for voting eligibility and the final fundraising deadline both land on Jan. 28. A spokesperson for the Avi Lewis campaign claims he has raised over $751,000 since the campaign began in...
The U.S. seized two sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela in back-to-back actions in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, officials said Wednesday. U.S. European Command announced the seizure of the merchant vessel Bella 1 for "violations of U.S. sanctions." A Coast Guard cutter had pursued the tanker into the waters between Scotland and Iceland after it tried to avoid...
Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet with President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week as he makes the first official trip to China by a Canadian prime minister in more than eight years. Carney's office confirmed the trip on Wednesday, which comes as the two countries move to restore stronger ties after years of trade and political tensions. The statement...
NDP MP Lori Idlout says she's been asked to consider it by Liberal Party members, and some constituents. Nunavut's MP says she has no plans right now to join the federal Liberal Party. “I have decided at this point that I can't,” Lori Idlout told CBC News in an interview on Monday. “I've definitely been asked to consider it.” The...
Donald Trump’s military strike on Venezuela, his designs on Greenland and his government’s declaration of ownership over the Western Hemisphere together represent an existential challenge to Canada, Bob Rae, this country’s former ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday. Mr. Rae said in an interview that Canadians would be mistaken in thinking they’re not “on the menu” too, meaning “the...
The head of the Royal Canadian Air Force has only been in the job for half a year -- but it's been an eventful period as the force has worked to rapidly overhaul its fleets and turn a corner on persistent personnel shortages. In a wide-ranging interview, Commander Lt.-Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet told The Canadian Press that while change is happening...
Yuri Fulmer said the Conservative Party of B.C. needs to be a "grand coalition" that refrains from "undisciplined" behaviour if it wants to govern, as he becomes the first high-profile candidate to run for the party's leadership. Fulmer, the chancellor of Capilano University who made his fortune with fast food franchises, said that means that the Conservatives have to "welcome...
OTTAWA -- Some First Nations chiefs say Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty's recent refusal to commit to source water protections in a promised clean water bill shows the government is sidelining the health of Indigenous communities in its push to build up the economy.
A Manitoba politician who was kicked out of the governing NDP caucus is suing Premier Wab Kinew and two other New Democrat legislature members. Mark Wasyliw, in a statement of claim, alleges that Kinew, Billie Cross and Ian Bushie defamed him with false and reckless statements during his removal from caucus in September 2024.
Canada and more than two dozen Ukrainian allies have signed a statement pledging to secure Ukraine from further Russian invasions if there is a viable peace deal. The U.K. and France have committed to physical hubs within Ukraine for armed support, but it remains unclear whether Canadian soldiers would be deployed on the ground.
Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations says recent U.S. military action in Venezuela shows that Greenland and Canada need to take threats to their sovereignty seriously. “The president has created a whole new guessing game of who’s next,” Bob Rae told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “An attack on Greenland would be an attack on NATO, it would be...
Businessman Charles Milliard is the first candidate to announce he's entering the race to lead the Quebec Liberal Party. Milliard, born in 1979, published a video on social media today in which he promised to fight for Quebecers. The former head of the federation of Quebec chambers of commerce finished second to Pablo Rodriguez in last year's leadership race.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says the future of Greenland will be "solely" up to the people of Denmark and Greenland. Carney was reacting to new comments from U.S. President Donald Trump and members of his administration about his desire to annex Greenland. "There's basic principles here, which is self-determination of nations, sovereignty, territorial integrity. And then there (are) approaches that...
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will continue to build up its military might in the coming years, in part so it's able to play a role in providing security guarantees for Ukraine. Carney is in Paris meeting with Ukraine's allies to discuss the role Canada might play in securing an eventual ceasefire in the war with Russia. At a...
Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government is working to expand access to oil markets in Asia now that Canada faces the prospect of Venezuelan oil displacing Canadian product in the American market. His remarks came after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre urged Carney to "immediately approve a pipeline to the Pacific Coast" in an letter shared on social media Tuesday...
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Ontario Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland's upcoming resignation from the House of Commons is "consistent" with taking a role as an unpaid economic development adviser for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The wife of Montreal activist and former federal NDP leadership hopeful Yves Engler, barred over alleged harassment, says she has put her name forward for the job. Bianca Mugyenyi shared on social media late Monday that she submitted vetting materials last week ahead of the NDP leadership vote set for March.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state must stand up to Republican President Donald Trump 's "assault on our values," using his final State of the State address Thursday to contrast his state as a bulwark against what he called a chaotic federal government.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House refused Thursday to override President Donald Trump's veto of two low-profile bills as Republicans stuck with the president despite their prior support for the measures.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate advanced a resolution Thursday that would limit President Donald Trump's ability to conduct further attacks against Venezuela, sounding a note of disapproval for his expanding ambitions in the Western Hemisphere.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over Greenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark. Rubio told U.S. lawmakers that Trump wants to buy it, rather than use military force.
Two people are hospitalized after they were shot by federal agents, the Portland Police Bureau said in a statement. It is not immediately clear what their conditions are. The FBI Portland office said in a post on X that the shooting involved Customs and Border Protection agents and they are leading the investigation.
Former Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Albert Chan Wai-yip is a longtime critic of China, who has accused its government of "crimes against humanity" after a crackdown on dissent in the Chinese special administrative region. But Chan said it is time for Canadians to look east again, as Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares for a trip to China where he will...
A former Canadian diplomat previously detained in China for nearly three years says Prime Minister Mark Carney’s upcoming visit to China is an important diplomatic move but warns that Canadian negotiators need to be cautious about Beijing’s ultimate motives. “China is a very complicated challenge for Canada, even more so now, given all the challenges we have in dealing with...
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minneapolis driver on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials said was an act of self-defence but that the city’s mayor described as “reckless” and unnecessary. The woman was shot during a traffic stop in a residential neighborhood...
The U.S. seized two sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela in back-to-back actions in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, officials said Wednesday. U.S. European Command announced the seizure of the merchant vessel Bella 1 for "violations of U.S. sanctions." A Coast Guard cutter had pursued the tanker into the waters between Scotland and Iceland after it tried to avoid...
Lisa Van Dusen: Senator Boehm, that was quite a year. Between the trade war, Donald Trump’s renewed undermining of multilateralism, and the geopolitical implications of American degradation — I think Trump’s recent National Security Strategy may have summed it up best as a capstone to 2025. How do you see Trump II, Year One? Sen. Peter Boehm: In foreign policy...
The year 2025 was a year of volatility, experimentation, and recalibration across Asia and Canada. Much of the volatility stemmed from U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda, which upended global trade norms and injected new uncertainty into supply chains. China, meanwhile, pressed ahead with an increasingly assertive industrial strategy, even as it contended with slower domestic growth and structural...
Even modest Canadian engagement with China may be judged less on its merits than on how it is interpreted in the U.S. within a framework designed to ‘wind down adversarial outside influence.’
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
A thorough media scan reveals practically no discussion about this important escalation, which would put Canada among only a few Western navies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) that operate submarine-launched land-attack weapons.
You may want to dust off your Bescherelles, Canadian politicos: the battle for the future of Québec is where things are going to happen in 2026. In case you missed it, today the new leader of the Québec Liberal Party, Pablo Rodriguez, announced his resignation. His resignation was precipitated by a terrible, scandalous month for the QLP — one that...
The federal government this week dumped its load of annual statistics about citizens’ use of the Access to Information Act.
The Everything Political panel with former MPs Martha Hall Findlay and Tony Clement discuss the new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, his “big hairy audacious goals,” his response to Maduro’s kidnapping, the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, and if a left wing populism could tap into the same anger and frustrations that Trump has.
Today, Gerry Butts – former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau and current adviser to Prime Minister Carney – is on the show. Butts is also the vice chairman of the global political risk firm, the Eurasia group, which releases a “Top Risks” list every year. We’ll drill down on a few of them, including their number one risk, the “U.S...
David Herle, Scott Reid, Jordan Leichnitz, and Kory Teneycke provide insights on the latest in Canadian politics.
Jim Balsillie joins Steve to discuss how he thinks Canada is sabotaging its own economy, how we have consigned ourselves to being a low value-added petro state, why we are operating from an outdated playbook, and Canada’s productivity crisis. They then discuss a real made-in-Canada approach, why foreign investment is overrated, and how to create a more sovereign future for...
